Generic Virus Thread

[Davkaus]

Just now, Demitri_C said:

Matw there are various countries that have had stricter lockdowns than we have and the infection rate is significantly lower than us. Google is your friend to tell you which countries

 

Ex-****ing-actly. They have much stricter lockdowns, in general. If you want to argue for that, I think there's merit in it.

I think having a 9pm curfew, on its own, with no further additional measures would be at best pointless, and at worst, counter productive, as @bickster suggested.  Not only is there no reason to think a 9pm curfew in isolation would reduce infections, it clearly could send the message "anything goes before the curfew". 

A nighttime curfew, when there is already almost nobody about is pointless. I'd wager an absolutely tiny proportion of infections are occurring in this period outside of the home/workplace. 

[bickster]

3 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Do you really believe a lot of people go out for exercise at 9pm?

You told me they were walking, this is exercise. So clearly they are, you told me they were

[ml1dch]

15 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

Which countries? What other methods do they also have in place?

I've Googled it so that other people don't need to waste their time with this dimwittery, Georgia and Cyprus have the magic bullet 9pm curfew. 

[Villarocker]

1 hour ago, markavfc40 said:

133k tests today sounds impressive. Number of people tested 69k.  Something seriously amiss here isn't there.

Two tests for every person. Second test is to see if the first test was accurate. 

[Villarocker]

34 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Your completely misunderstanding eveeything im saying.

I didnt say end the current lockdown did i? You add this to the existing lockdown. At 9pm you have people walking down the street and they shouldnt be. 

Do some research in other countries and see how this has worked and their infection rates are significantly lower than us.

Why shouldn't people be walking down the street at 9pm? People are allowed to shop and if I needed to go and get something urgent (like a bottle of JD to help my mental health ) and it is 10pm I do not see a problem with that. In fact, by nature, there will be fewer people out and about. 

[wazzap24]

33 minutes ago, Villarocker said:

Two tests for every person. Second test is to see if the first test was accurate. 

Tomorrow’s briefing

[Straggler]

Half of London households do not have cars, they have to use public transport. With just this half keeping a 2m gap is impossible. If the other half commute to work in their cars London gets gridlocked and no one gets anywhere. London does not work without significant use of public transport. There really isn't an easy answer to socially distancing commuting in the capital. It's like mating an elephant with a mouse, the dynamics are never going to work and things are just going to get messy if you try.

[chrisp65]

3 hours ago, Straggler said:

Half of London households do not have cars, they have to use public transport. With just this half keeping a 2m gap is impossible. If the other half commute to work in their cars London gets gridlocked and no one gets anywhere. London does not work without significant use of public transport. There really isn't an easy answer to socially distancing commuting in the capital. It's like mating an elephant with a mouse, the dynamics are never going to work and things are just going to get messy if you try.

It’s almost as though the Prime Minister didn’t think it through.

[Brumstopdogs]

 

[HanoiVillan]

6 hours ago, Demitri_C said:

Sorry but your wrong there. Why is there a big issue in london? Not cars, parking spaces mate. Go down central london at around 11am see if you can find parking? All single yellows and resident parking. 

Also alot of people on here complaining about the tubes so if your saying not to do this how do propose people get to work in central London or west london if you live on the outskirts of london?

 

6 hours ago, Demitri_C said:

Your completely misunderstanding eveeything im saying.

I didnt say end the current lockdown did i? You add this to the existing lockdown. At 9pm you have people walking down the street and they shouldnt be. 

Do some research in other countries and see how this has worked and their infection rates are significantly lower than us.

Woah hang on, sorry I'm late but this is quite confusing. I thought initially that you wanted to end the lockdown, but I see from the post above that you want a *tougher* lockdown (current measures + curfew). Which rather begs the question, what on earth do you care about parking in central London for?

[KentVillan]

I was massively in favour of a very strong, early response to this, including some of the lockdown measures.

But I'm concerned how many people want to continue strict lockdown measures for as long as possible for no obvious scientific reason. We will destroy our economy, destroy people's lives, and threaten civil liberties every extra day beyond necessary that we do this.

You really need to be sure this is still the right thing to do. The onus should be on the people advocating for lockdown to evidence their argument, not the people advocating for lifting lockdown.

Personally I think we locked down too late, but are now extending it too long.

[chrisp65]

15 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

I was massively in favour of a very strong, early response to this, including some of the lockdown measures.

But I'm concerned how many people want to continue strict lockdown measures for as long as possible for no obvious scientific reason. We will destroy our economy, destroy people's lives, and threaten civil liberties every extra day beyond necessary that we do this.

You really need to be sure this is still the right thing to do. The onus should be on the people advocating for lockdown to evidence their argument, not the people advocating for lifting lockdown.

Personally I think we locked down too late, but are now extending it too long.

But there are more daily deaths and new symptomatic cases here now, than 8 weeks ago.

Why would that result in loosening off restrictions? Was lock down here just plain wrong in the first place? 

Or should we ignore our own area and simply adopt what’s best for London?

I’d have thought some form of track and trace would help us make informed geographical decisions rather than just these huge random best guesses. If it flares up in Somerset, lockdown Somerset. If the R is 0.3 in London, everyone get down the park.

If we ignore the ‘R’ for the sake of the economy, that’s another lockdown late June / early July. Then another somewhere around October, then one for Christmas or New Year.

Meanwhile we’ve utterly destroyed the local economy of towns and regions that never had much of a covid problem in the first place. We got this really wrong when we saw trouble in Europe and the South East and decided the best thing to do was keep Heathrow open and close the beaches in Pembrokeshire.

Needs to be a lot smarter than on/off stop/go.

Yorkshire could be working whilst London stops. London could run whilst Lancashire stops.

[HanoiVillan]

45 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

I was massively in favour of a very strong, early response to this, including some of the lockdown measures.

But I'm concerned how many people want to continue strict lockdown measures for as long as possible for no obvious scientific reason. We will destroy our economy, destroy people's lives, and threaten civil liberties every extra day beyond necessary that we do this.

You really need to be sure this is still the right thing to do. The onus should be on the people advocating for lockdown to evidence their argument, not the people advocating for lifting lockdown.

Personally I think we locked down too late, but are now extending it too long.

The problem is that fundamentally little has changed, other than the lockdown/enforced social distancing reducing the effective reproduction rate of the virus. We have achieved little extra PPE production capacity, and have not set up any meaningful form of track and trace testing system, nor have we instituted any form of centralised isolation. So there is no reason to believe that ending enforced social distancing will achieve anything other than returning the spread of the virus to its state in early March, at which point all the economic hardship we have already been through will have bought us time to achieve nothing at all.

[OutByEaster?]

Some form of "passporting" on lockdown release would probably work, where people who had passed an antibody test were allowed to do whatever they liked, the young would have looser restrictions than the old and so on - but it would be a nightmare to police and shaky from a civil liberties position Showing the certificate on your phone that says you've developed an immunity before you're allowed into the pub would just be odd.

Anyways, there's a vaguely dystopian nightmare to consider.

 

[KentVillan]

43 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

But there are more daily deaths and new symptomatic cases here now, than 8 weeks ago.

Growth rate is more important than the absolute figure, and deaths are a lagging indicator anyway. We're well past the peak.

I take Covid-19 really seriously and am not trying to downplay the threat at all. What I'm saying is that we are weeks past the peak, and the govt is now doubling down on lockdown purely to overcompensate for its failings early on. We need to move on from lockdown ASAP. It is no longer helping.

[HanoiVillan]

5 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

Growth rate is more important than the absolute figure, and deaths are a lagging indicator anyway. We're well past the peak.

I take Covid-19 really seriously and am not trying to downplay the threat at all. What I'm saying is that we are weeks past the peak, and the govt is now doubling down on lockdown purely to overcompensate for its failings early on. We need to move on from lockdown ASAP. It is no longer helping.

a] the growth rate will increase, with increased human contact;

b] 'the peak' is not independent of human action, but a result of it, and there will be more peaks as the effective reproduction rate rises;

c] the lockdown is 'helping' to hold down the effective reproduction rate, and we have no other method at scale to do so currently.

[KentVillan]

29 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

The problem is that fundamentally little has changed, other than the lockdown/enforced social distancing reducing the effective reproduction rate of the virus. We have achieved little extra PPE production capacity, and have not set up any meaningful form of track and trace testing system, nor have we instituted any form of centralised isolation. So there is no reason to believe that ending enforced social distancing will achieve anything other than returning the spread of the virus to its state in early March, at which point all the economic hardship we have already been through will have bought us time to achieve nothing at all.

Disagree. (a) There is no evidence that it was lockdown that actually brought R0 down (as opposed to hand washing, face masks, self-imposed social distancing, etc.), and (b) There is no evidence of the post-lockdown "second wave" happening anywhere in the world - this did happen with Spanish Flu, but there's no reason to expect the same thing to happen with Covid-19. Media reports of second waves in Germany and Singapore are completely unsupported by the actual data.

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/politics/scottish-politics/2175148/coronavirus-second-wave-of-deadly-virus-described-as-very-unlikely-by-expert/

Quote

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and many experts have warned this week of the risk of a “second peak” in cases and deaths if the country exits lockdown too soon.

 

But, when asked if such a second wave was inevitable, Prof Pennington said: “No, I’m not sure where this ‘second peak’ idea comes from.

“Except, well, I know where it comes from, it comes from flu. Because when we have a flu pandemic we always get a second peak, and sometimes we get a third peak.

“Now, why we should get one with this virus, I don’t quite understand.

“It just seems to be a phenomenon with flu, and I don’t see any reason myself, and I haven’t seen any evidence to support the idea that there would be a second peak of the virus.”

Denmark reopened schools on 15th April, and today recorded 0 deaths from Covid-19. Tracking and testing are not essential at all. Diseases follow a natural epidemic curve, and while the UK has had a brutal time of things over the last few weeks, it has now mostly run its course.

On top of that, compared with the "unknown" of Covid-19, we know that a huge amount of damage is being done to people's financial situations and personal health due to lockdown measures. I'm amazed so many people are buying into all of this as an article of faith.

The countries that have weathered Covid-19 the best have not locked down. They have adopted sensible preventative measures while attempting to keep their economies going.

[KentVillan]

1 minute ago, HanoiVillan said:

a] the growth rate will increase, with increased human contact;

b] 'the peak' is not independent of human action, but a result of it, and there will be more peaks as the effective reproduction rate rises;

c] the lockdown is 'helping' to hold down the effective reproduction rate, and we have no other method at scale to do so currently.

Evidence all of your points, please.

[HanoiVillan]

2 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

Evidence all of your points, please.

Points A and B are simply how viruses are transmitted. The virus has not disappeared; we are getting about 4000 positive tests per day. For so long as it is widespread within the community, the spread will increase with increased human contact. You have a different argument on Point C I understand, but it is not one that I have seen evidence for or seen made elsewhere. You have also added the get-out of 'self-imposed social distancing', which seems to allow you the benefit of a lockdown in your argument, while claiming the lockdown is irrelevant. 'Self-imposed social distancing' is only possible at this scale because of government support, provided as part of the lockdown.

 

28 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

Tracking and testing are not essential at all. Diseases follow a natural epidemic curve, and while the UK has had a brutal time of things over the last few weeks, it has now mostly run its course.
 

Maybe you've just solved the crisis. Or maybe you haven't.

[KentVillan]

47 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Points A and B are simply how viruses are transmitted. The virus has not disappeared; we are getting about 4000 positive tests per day. For so long as it is widespread within the community, the spread will increase with increased human contact. You have a different argument on Point C I understand, but it is not one that I have seen evidence for or seen made elsewhere. You have also added the get-out of 'self-imposed social distancing', which seems to allow you the benefit of a lockdown in your argument, while claiming the lockdown is irrelevant. 'Self-imposed social distancing' is only possible at this scale because of government support, provided as part of the lockdown.

Point A: human contact is just one input in the transmission process. Other factors like % of susceptible individuals (going down every day - according to mainstream SIR epidemiology models) and climactic conditions (emerging evidence that air temperature and humidity affect spread, consistent with other coronavirus strains) are moving against this. So Point A is not "simply how viruses are transmitted".

Point B: "The peak is a result of human action". No, it is clearly an interaction between the natural pattern of an epidemic and human measures to control that. You cannot say it is one or the other, no epidemiologist would claim that.

Point C : If you haven't seen any experts questioning the evidence base for lockdown (I'm not talking about Toby Young here) then you aren't reading widely enough on the subject.

Just to reiterate: I am not a Covid-19 sceptic. I don't think lockdown was a hysterical reaction. I do believe Covid-19 is super-dangerous. BUT I think we are now clearly overreacting to a threat that has mostly passed. Please listen to what I'm saying and check all the sources I have shared.