Generic Virus Thread

[HanoiVillan]

Just now, PaulC said:

nick Hancock

I wrote a quiz question in which he was the answer the other week, and absolutely nobody could remember who he was (even after I revealed the answer and described him).

[Demitri_C]

1 hour ago, mjmooney said:

I think the most popular would have been "terrorist sympathiser", closely followed by "the policies are unrealistic and would bankrupt the country", "too sympathetic to gays and immigrants" and "insufficiently anti-EU". Throw in wonky glasses and Diane Abbott for luck. I don't believe the average northern chav Sun readers gave a toss about antisemitism. 

But this should be in the Labour thread, can we take it over there and get back to Coronavirus? 

Should you not take that to the conservatives thread on that basis as this about the virus

[Genie]

Just now, HanoiVillan said:

I wrote a quiz question in which he was the answer the other week, and absolutely nobody could remember who he was (even after I revealed the answer and described him).

Stokes most famous fan

[Demitri_C]

1 hour ago, snowychap said:

Countries need good leadership and government not strong leadership.

Responses to things like the virus require the former and not the latter.

Dont agree. Strong leadership is definintely needed. Not saying everyone else has ti be uesless but leadership is key. Remembere who puts who in key positions 

[Rolta]

11 minutes ago, PaulC said:

I think the govt of our country are a lot more transparent than many other countries. I bet Brazil and Russia have had more deaths than us 

Our government seems to be trying out a lot of Russian tactics when it comes to their information delivery. There's an example every few days of them making shit up.

[Demitri_C]

1 hour ago, Stevo985 said:

The numbers don't come from the media. They come from the NHS and/or ONS. 

I'm not saying the numbers are entirely accurate. I think it's almost certain that they are not accurate, the rel number is more than likely higher.

But your point was about the media manipulating them. They're not. The numbers do not come from the media. If the media manipulated them it would easily be spotted by just looking at the source which is readily available.

I should have inserted "media/government" in my initial post. The media is a tree of the governments anyway. But my point was i do believe the numbers are being manipulated by other countries so i do not believe we are 3rd highest worldwide.

But that is very hard to prove as we have to put trust in what the government/media tell us.  As this site is so anti-tory im suprised so many people believe the crap they tell us !

[Rolta]

Just now, Demitri_C said:

I should have inserted "media/government" in my initial post. The media is a tree of the governments anyway. But my point was i do believe the numbers are being manipulated by other countries so i do not believe we are 3rd highest worldwide.

But that is very hard to prove as we have to put trust in what the government/media tell us.  As this site is so anti-tory im suprised so many people believe the crap they tell us !

Well, it's not going to be any better than they say.

At the moment when they want to lie about something (e.g. amount of people tested in a day) and they don't like the answer they just omit it and hope there are enough fanboys out there to quash any criticism.

[chrisp65]

11 minutes ago, Genie said:

I’m curious about Germany, I find their death toll to be suspiciously low. 

People are never bloody happy.

They’ve been world leaders in the past and look where that got ‘em.

[Demitri_C]

Just now, Rolta said:

Well, it's not going to be any better than they say.

At the moment when they want to lie about something (e.g. amount of people tested in a day) and they don't like the answer they just omit it and hope there are enough fanboys out there to quash any criticism.

Its going to be interesting in next few weeks for me when it comes to numbers.  As so many people are out and so many more fools ignoring the social distancing at packed beaches, you would expect if it takes 14 days to show symptoms that the infection rate should get much higher. 

If it doesnt then they are either lying to us, or installed fear into us for another motive. Who knows eh

[Stevo985]

7 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

I should have inserted "media/government" in my initial post. The media is a tree of the governments anyway. But my point was i do believe the numbers are being manipulated by other countries so i do not believe we are 3rd highest worldwide.

But that is very hard to prove as we have to put trust in what the government/media tell us.  As this site is so anti-tory im suprised so many people believe the crap they tell us !

The ONS isn't the government either. 

Maybe we aren't the 3rd highest worldwide. But we are right up there. Maybe we're 4th or 5th but it's still an appalling place to be.

 

I don't get your point. Because we believe the numbers from the non-government ONS show that we're one of the worst in the world compared to other countries who may or may not report their figures accurately, it means we're believing everything the Tories tell us?

That makes no sense.

Surely if the government were manipulating the figures then we'd be looking a lot better off than we are now. Why would they be using the media to manipulate figures to make us look worse?

What you're saying doesn't make any sense.

Edited May 27, 2020 by Stevo985

[snowychap]

15 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Dont agree.

That is obvious.

Quote

Strong leadership is definintely needed.

Why?

You haven't even qualified this by saying that you want them to make the right decisions (and before you cllaim that this is implicit - it very much is not) though when you get your 'strong' leader they don't listen to other people, they plough on with what they have decided to do because this is what makes them 'strong' and they rarely correct course, at least in a transparent way accepting an error of judgement initially, as this would make them look weak.

This is straying in to wider political matters but it is also relevant to this virus response across the world.

Edited May 27, 2020 by snowychap

[Demitri_C]

Just now, Stevo985 said:

The ONS isn't the government either. 

Maybe we aren't the 3rd highest worldwide. But we are right up there. Maybe we're 4th or 5th but it's still an appalling place to be.

 

I don't get your point. Because we believe the numbers from the non-government ONS show that we're one of the worst in the world compared to other countries who may or may not report their figures accurately, it means we're believing everything the Tories tell us?

That makes no sense.

Surely if the government were manipulating the figures then we'd be looking a lot better off than we are now.

What you're saying doesn't make any sense.

It makes sense to me. Maybe there is a reason they wat everyone at home that none of us know about? Or maybe they are just discreetly going back to the herding tactic that failed without saying so to avoid criticism? Their logic being  lets let the older people or people with health issues die and the ones who have strong immune systems will survive. Sounds extreme but i dont trust these lot as far as i can throw them.

Provides more money for them and gets the economy back. Its very shit but thays why i believe they manipulated them. I think foreign countries  have definitely not been honest with their numbers. Lets be honest would you travel to Bulgaria for example if they reported 40,500 deaths? Im obviously over inflating the number but you get my point i hope

[Demitri_C]

4 minutes ago, snowychap said:

That is obvious.

Why?

You haven't even qualified this by saying that you want them to make the right decisions (and before you cllaim that this is implicit - it very much is not) though when you get your 'strong' leader they don't listen to other people, they plough on with what they have decided to do because this is what makes them 'strong' and they rarely correct course, at least in a transparent way accepting an error of judgement initially, as this would make them look weak.

This is straying in to wider political matters but it is also relevant to this virus response across the world.

How do you know that they dont listen to others? Just because they arr strong doesnt mean they wont listen to others. That is complete speculation 

[Rolta]

4 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

It makes sense to me. Maybe there is a reason they wat everyone at home that none of us know about? Or maybe they are just discreetly going back to the herding tactic that failed without saying so to avoid criticism? Their logic being  lets let the older people or people with health issues die and the ones who have strong immune systems will survive. Sounds extreme but i dont trust these lot as far as i can throw them.

Provides more money for them and gets the economy back. Its very shit but thays why i believe they manipulated them. I think foreign countries  have definitely not been honest with their numbers. Lets be honest would you travel to Bulgaria for example if they reported 40,500 deaths? Im obviously over inflating the number but you get my point i hope

The UK is a foreign country too by the way.

[Straggler]

29 minutes ago, Genie said:

I’m curious about Germany, I find their death toll to be suspiciously low. 

Why?

[HanoiVillan]

The best way to understand how bad the outbreak has been is to look at excess deaths, which you can do for most European countries at the following site:

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

They produce a chart showing a 'z score', which is essentially how far above or below the 'normal range' deaths have been (indicated by the grey bar). For a country in which the outbreak has been nearly entirely contained (such as Denmark, for instance), the chart is flat:

This shows the outbreak had essentially no impact on mortality in Denmark. In a fairly badly affected country, you can clearly see the impact in excess deaths (the blue mountain at the end of the line):

The worst-hit country in Europe, other than us, was Spain:

This is the line for England:

The virus has had a worse impact here, in terms of excess mortality, than any of the countries compared. Probably only New York state would be a similar magnitude of excess mortality (that data isn't available through that site).

Is it possible that Brazil and Russia will end up worse? Sure, it's possible. But 'having a better government response than Jair Bolsonaro or Vladimir Putin' would be clearing an incredibly low bar anyway.

 

[Chindie]

We just so happened to have the most people needing to die and it was only strong leadership that achieved that for us.

[KentVillan]

Good thread on why second wave is unlikely in the short-term (more likely to happen later in the year).

[HanoiVillan]

3 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

Good thread on why second wave is unlikely in the short-term (more likely to happen later in the year).

Thanks, that's interesting (though I think it doesn't actually go so far as to say that a second wave is 'unlikely'). Re seasonality, we will have the chance to observe this in South America, where especially Brazil, Peru and Chile have bad outbreaks and are heading into winter.

[KentVillan]

7 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Thanks, that's interesting (though I think it doesn't actually go so far as to say that a second wave is 'unlikely'). Re seasonality, we will have the chance to observe this in South America, where especially Brazil, Peru and Chile have bad outbreaks and are heading into winter.

The only issue is that very few major cities in the southern hemisphere get sufficiently cold to match the conditions we had in northern Europe, northern China, New York, etc. The most vulnerable place is likely to be New Zealand, but they may have succeeded in completely shutting it out.

But the strong seasonal pattern of every other endemic coronavirus suggests seasonality of Covid-19 is plausible (maybe even probable):

I think what's really interesting, though, is that experts are starting to revise their views on what % of the population are susceptible, and therefore what % infection is needed for the virus to run out of steam. Originally this was thought to be 60% - now more people are suggesting figures like 5%, 10%, 20%.

Edited May 27, 2020 by KentVillan