Generic Virus Thread

[snowychap]

Government backtracks on French quarantine exemption

Quote

The government has denied that travellers from France will be exempted from the planned coronavirus quarantine measures.

Under the plans announced last weekend, people arriving from abroad must isolate themselves for two weeks.

Those with nowhere to stay will be obliged to isolate in accommodation provided by the authorities.

Initially, a joint statement from the British and French governments said no quarantine measures would apply.

"No quarantine measures would apply to travellers coming from France at this stage; any measures on either side would be taken in a concerted and reciprocal manner," says the statement, which was published on the government''s website on 10 May.

...

But today, the prime minister's spokesman insisted there was no French exemption, and that the original statement referred to the need for cooperation to manage the common border between the two countries.

It now appears that those exempted from the policy could include freight drivers, in order to allow the flow of goods to continue, and people working on Covid-19 research, but not ordinary travellers.

...more

 

Edited May 16, 2020 by snowychap

[snowychap]

Independent:

Quote

Priti Patel has sparked anger by refusing to cut or axe the huge fees paid by foreign healthcare workers to help fund the NHS – just three weeks after promising to “review” the controversial charges.

...

The Home Office is now saying there was no “review”, beyond waiving the surcharge where visas had been extended for one year – despite Ms Patel describing it as such on national television.

...more

 

Edited May 16, 2020 by snowychap

[bickster]

5 hours ago, KentVillan said:

We're well past A peak.

FTFY

[Jareth]

For those that missed it, I recommend the full 5 minutes devoted to things here - 

 

[blandy]

6 hours ago, KentVillan said:

The countries that have weathered Covid-19 the best have not locked down.

That’s something of a dubious claim. It’s obviously subjective because “weathered the best” means what?  Had fewest cases, had no cases, had a fair number of cases but few deaths, had the shortest outbreak?

Its true places such as South Korea have done well by using their established track and trace infrastructure, wearing of masks and so on, and having introduced that immediately. It’s also true that New Zealand and Australia did introduce lockdowns but Sweden and Japan didn’t, but then again the US didn’t.do so at national government level.

i think that your point really ought to be perhaps that it is possible to not lock down, or to remove lockdown and do well, where there are effective other measures in place AND where the number of cases is known and is manageably  low, otherwise you end up like the US.

[Demitri_C]

14 hours ago, bickster said:

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

Completely different to what i asked you.

Edited May 16, 2020 by Demitri_C

[Davkaus]

2 hours ago, snowychap said:

Independent:

 

Lying comes as naturally as breathing to this cabinet.

If they lie, really, really hard, maybe we'll all believe them.

[bickster]

12 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Completely different to what i asked you

It really isn't

Is walking you dog allowed in your version of lockdown after 9pm?

[Demitri_C]

1 minute ago, bickster said:

It really isn't

I asked you do you really believe people are going for exercise at 9pm?

They aren't where i am they are youngsters socialising

[DCJonah]

23 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

Lying comes as naturally as breathing to this cabinet.

If they lie, really, really hard, maybe we'll all believe them.

This is the world we live in now. There are no consequences for politicians lying. In fact it seems to make them more popular with their base support.

[bickster]

1 hour ago, Demitri_C said:

I asked you do you really believe people are going for exercise at 9pm?

They aren't where i am they are youngsters socialising

Dem the point is and you've completely missed it, WALKING IS EXERCISE

So if the problem is "youngsters sociialising", deal with that problem, it's already against the law, don't punish those people obeying the law by further curtailing their freedoms

[Davkaus]

It's like explaining calculus to my cat.

[choffer]

2 hours ago, Demitri_C said:

I asked you do you really believe people are going for exercise at 9pm?

They aren't where i am they are youngsters socialising

I do. It's much quieter at that time in the ropey old part of West London I inhabit. Haven't come across these socialising youngsters either. 

[sne]

Starting to kick off Michigan style in Sweden now, the daily protests outside the Public Healthcare Agency (FHM) are starting to get nasty.

Beware of the pride tote bag and the crocheted shield of condemnation. 

[Villarocker]

1 hour ago, sne said:

Starting to kick off Michigan style in Sweden now, the daily protests outside the Public Healthcare Agency (FHM) are starting to get nasty.

Beware of the pride tote bag and the crocheted shield of condemnation. 

That ^ is funny!

[Brumstopdogs]

2 hours ago, Davkaus said:

It's like explaining calculus to my cat.

[HanoiVillan]

10 hours ago, KentVillan said:

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".

The driver of viral transmission is contact with vulnerable people. This can happen through face-to-face contact, or through shared surfaces, but transmission occurs through human-human chains. You have given some examples of factors that affect the effective reproduction rate of the virus (which includes, as you say, the proportion of the population which remains vulnerable to infection, and any climactic effect (which is unproven at this stage), and also includes, as you have previously mentioned, mask-wearing and hand-washing, and other forms of behavioural change, such as people working from home and not being allowed to congregate indoors). The effective reproduction rate of the virus, in the UK, is much reduced from the base reproduction rate because of all of these factors. However, with a small proportion of the population possessing antibodies and the virus widespread in the community (again, there are thousands of positive tests per day) an increase in human contact will lead to an increase in the effective reproduction rate, unless there are measures in place to replicate the effects of those factors. That's why governments are looking to achieve much higher levels of testing; because finding more active cases will allow greater quarantine of the affected population.

10 hours ago, KentVillan said:

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.

Good job I'm not arguing it then.

The very simple point is that if no measures had been taken to control the spread of the virus, none whatsoever, then we would not have reached the peak of infections with less than 5% of the population infected. Therefore, 'the peak' has occured at the point it has because of human action to control the spread of the virus. I don't think we disagree about that? However, with such a small proportion of the population infected and possessing antibodies, the absence of further, higher peaks (which is what you would expect in 'propagated', or 'progressive source', epidemics like this one) depends on further human action to control the spread of the virus. 'End the lockdown' is a cry to remove the single main tool that we have to control the spread, but it can only responsibly be done when we have alternative measures in place that recreate its effects. We do not have those in place yet, which is why we are not leaving lockdown yet.

10 hours ago, KentVillan said:

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.

 

I have listened very carefully to what Tegnell says here, and what he says from 12:08 onwards is:

'I think for most countries the most important point about it is to have a working health system, and if you have a health system that's not very well prepared, or already slightly overwhelmed, I can understand that going for a lockdown is something that's - very tempting, something that maybe needs to be done to save time. Because I think you need to realise that locking down is saving time, it's not solving anything, we can see now that our neighbouring countries have about 1% of the population who has been infected so far, we have maybe 20, 25%, which means they have a long way to go before they will get any kind of help from immunity in the population in controlling the disease, which means that they're gonna have a lot of measures in place for a long, long time. But given that saving time is something that you really, really need to do, to prepare your health services so that they're at the most high level of alert as possible, and then maybe open up slowly, to try to gauge where you can be in your health service, and that's gonna be very tricky, and something all European countries are now fighting with'.

This is why we locked down in the first place; the health system appeared to be on the brink of becoming rapidly overwhelmed, as it already had little spare capacity, particularly in intensive care. We 'saved time' (I think he means 'bought time' here, because I can't make sense of 'saved time' in the normal sense of the words), but for what? Again, we have not got sufficient procedures in place to replicate the effects of locking down, which is why the government is not ending it. And we certainly do not seem to have anything like a sufficient proportion of the population possessing antibodies to get any benefit from immunity within the community, as he says.

[chrisp65]

Not going to turn this in to a witch hunt @KentVillan its purely a discussion, and I’m happy to learn new angles, but 2 months ago I was sent home from work, we began furloughing staff, I stopped seeing my parents or meeting up with the guys at the football.

At that point, the total cumulative covid deaths here, up to and including that day, were 16.

Today’s reported figure here is 18 reported deaths. 18 in a day, versus 16 in total.

I genuinely don’t see how more deaths can be seen as the threat has basically passed and we can now start relaxing the current arrangements.

Or is there some formula where deaths in Swansea are less concerning than deaths in Sittingbourne?

It’s got to be more nuanced, so it has to involve test n trace and has to be more national and regional rather than whole UK.

Or we ease off the lockdown and trust the good common sense of everyone, and it would need to be everyone, including creme eggs up the arse guy, Toby Young and serial shagger Boris Johnson.

 

 

 

 

[Brumstopdogs]

[foreveryoung]

Well just been down sutton park with my lad, felt pretty uncomfortable. Packed like a bank holiday hardly any social distancing, though it would be hard with the amount of people there, an not one I saw wearing a mask. I came out any walked back home on the pavement. So busy on the roads too, Mrs was shopping while we were out, she said it was chaos too in the supermarket a little bit more relaxed she said. So In reality I guess it's as good as back to normal, bar those who are furloughed.