Coronavirus

[Albert]

8 minutes ago, maxjam said:

Cool, then Australia has made the most of the advantages the UK doesn't have - such as 1m people passing through it every single day.  Apart from Victoria that is, which is apparently living under some of the most draconian lockdown restrictions in the world.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/it-just-feels-surreal-military-posted-checkpoints-australian-state-extends-n1237068

Its almost as though one size doesn't fit all.

You keep going for this 'not a global hub' point, but there isn't that much international traffic these days. Other countries, which are also global hubs, have managed it as well, as noted previously. This talking point is just a way to deflect, and doesn't really say anything. Equally, it is implicitly arguing that the UK values travelers passing through, and having weak borders, over the lives of their people, but that's a different discussion. 

Fact checking on the claims of Victoria's lockdowns being 'some of the most draconian' found it not to be the case. Amazing that you're going for sources from around 2 months ago though, given that Victoria are indeed easing restrictions at this time. Interestingly, at the time of that article you posted, there was also very high support for the lockdowns. It did wane over the course of it, but remained fairly high still. 

Edit: Also, nobody is saying one size fits all. Rather, having the goal of zero cases is the gold standard. This can be achieved through a range of means, as discussed previously. 

[Norman]

21 minutes ago, Albert said:

Again, it's amazing you believe so little in the competency of the UK. 

Australia is also no 'model' country, it's just done a somewhat competent job overall. As discussed though, Victoria did drop the ball. 

You'll also note that the article does show that things have begun to return to some kind of normality, except in Victoria. This shows the benefits I previously discussed. 

For how long? You're trying to stop the spread of a disease that has spread so far and wide it will undoubtedly, at some point, spread faster than Australia can track it. 

One person in a sports stadium, one person at a concert. It will happen. 

If a vaccine is available in the next 6 months. Good job. 

If it isn't. Good luck. 

[Ghost of Clough]

1 hour ago, TexasRam said:

The truth will set you free. Always.

 

I'm not sure what your point is here. I only know of people saying we're at a similar stage as we were in the middle of March - never a month on from there.
The graph looks wrong as well. It says initial 6 weeks but the starts from mid-March instead of the start of March when the data set starts from, or much earlier when the virus was first in the country. Using the same source for the data as mentioned in yours, I get this graph:

Bare in mind the last 4 or so days are still incomplete, so the down trend will almost certainly become an up trend.

What about this graph (last 4 or so days incomplete) where we have 4 days in line with mid-March? How many matching days until we should be concerned that we're going to see a repeat of the first wave?

[Gone]

20 minutes ago, Albert said:

Not really surprising, and a bit of a weird way to compare. There are controls now, you expect the second wave to not takeoff as fast, this is also seen in the rate at which new cases are occurring. The second wave is rising, but slower, so the same will be seen in deaths. 

 Not really weird to compare, yesterday we are told there are more people In hospital with Covid than when we went into lockdown in March.  So let’s compare the death rate as well, why not it’s seems to be the usual retort when anybody argues on opening up the country or comparing different countries approaches to the issue. 

 

[maxjam]

8 minutes ago, Albert said:

You keep going for this 'not a global hub' point, but there isn't that much international traffic these days. Other countries, which are also global hubs, have managed it as well, as noted previously. This talking point is just a way to deflect, and doesn't really say anything. Equally, it is implicitly arguing that the UK values travelers passing through, and having weak borders, over the lives of their people, but that's a different discussion. 

Fact checking on the claims of Victoria's lockdowns being 'some of the most draconian' found it not to be the case. Amazing that you're going for sources from around 2 months ago though, given that Victoria are indeed easing restrictions at this time. Interestingly, at the time of that article you posted, there was also very high support for the lockdowns. It did wane over the course of it, but remained fairly high still. 

Edit: Also, nobody is saying one size fits all. Rather, having the goal of zero cases is the gold standard. This can be achieved through a range of means, as discussed previously. 

TBH I know very little about Australia, couldn't care less what they are doing tbh.  The link was from a very quick google search from which I gleaned that Australia (and New Zealand) have been doing harsh lockdowns and looks like they will continue to do so should the need arise - which it will for the reasons @Norman pointed out.

Amongst other challenges, the UK is a global hub however and that does play a role in letting covid back into the country.  We will never reach 'gold standard' until it has passed through a large percentage of the population and keeping a lid on flair-ups will only add to the economic and social pain in the meantime.

I'm not going to spend the rest of the morning going over old ground though as the conversation never moves any further forwards.

[Gone]

9 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

I'm not sure what your point is here. I only know of people saying we're at a similar stage as we were in the middle of March - never a month on from there.
The graph looks wrong as well. It says initial 6 weeks but the starts from mid-March instead of the start of March when the data set starts from, or much earlier when the virus was first in the country. Using the same source for the data as mentioned in yours, I get this graph:

Bare in mind the last 4 or so days are still incomplete, so the down trend will almost certainly become an up trend.

What about this graph (last 4 or so days incomplete) where we have 4 days in line with mid-March? How many matching days until we should be concerned that we're going to see a repeat of the first wave?

We are comparing cases with March are we not ? That’s what the big sell was yesterday. Why not compare other variables. Or do we only compare then ones that fit the narrative?

[Gone]

31 minutes ago, ariotofmyown said:

Pathetic chart. Why is the last 6 weeks mapped against the 6 weeks beginning 13th March? What has 3rd September got in common with 13th March?

If the first of October was mapped against 13th March, then the situation would look terrifying.

Why’s it a pathetic chart, doesn’t fit your narrative? Would it look terrifying? Show us then

[maxjam]

3 minutes ago, TexasRam said:

 Not really weird to compare, yesterday we are told there are more people In hospital with Covid than when we went into lockdown in March.  So let’s compare the death rate as well, why not it’s seems to be the usual retort when anybody argues on opening up the country or comparing different countries approaches to the issue. 

 

Getting reliable data is increasingly difficult to come by - I spent a good time last night searching for information only to find it was from several months ago or being made increasingly difficult to understand.

For example, this used to be a good source of info, giving you exact numbers as to how many people have died from covid in each age bracket - now its just meaningless garbage;

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-age.html

[Ghost of Clough]

7 minutes ago, TexasRam said:

We are comparing cases with March are we not ? That’s what the big sell was yesterday. Why not compare other variables. Or do we only compare then ones that fit the narrative?

Yes, comparing the current state with March (mid-March to be more exact). A true comparison would be showing the last 6 weeks with the 6 weeks leading up to mid-March (not the 6 weeks after)

[Ghost of Clough]

21 minutes ago, maxjam said:

Getting reliable data is increasingly difficult to come by - I spent a good time last night searching for information only to find it was from several months ago or being made increasingly difficult to understand.

For example, this used to be a good source of info, giving you exact numbers as to how many people have died from covid in each age bracket - now its just meaningless garbage;

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-age.html

The exact numbers for each each group can be found on a different page.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm

[Albert]

27 minutes ago, Norman said:

For how long? You're trying to stop the spread of a disease that has spread so far and wide it will undoubtedly, at some point, spread faster than Australia can track it. 

You say that, but we're going on 6 months with virtually no cases in more than half the cases. There have been minor outbreaks there, but they have been handled effectively. 

Where it was completely out of control, they've wrested control back through lockdowns, and are now on their way out of them. 

27 minutes ago, Norman said:

One person in a sports stadium, one person at a concert. It will happen. 

If a vaccine is available in the next 6 months. Good job. 

If it isn't. Good luck. 

At the end of the day, things may well fall apart, but there a sizable number of countries, this has been done successfully, and the results speak for themselves, as attested to by the post maxjam linked before. 

21 minutes ago, TexasRam said:

 Not really weird to compare, yesterday we are told there are more people In hospital with Covid than when we went into lockdown in March.  So let’s compare the death rate as well, why not it’s seems to be the usual retort when anybody argues on opening up the country or comparing different countries approaches to the issue. 

 

That's not comparing the death rate though, nor does it act as a proxy for it. What you're showing is the trend of change in deaths. The expectation is that it should rise slower this time, and is. Looking at the numbers exploding as they did into April isn't really assisting in the point at all. 

20 minutes ago, maxjam said:

TBH I know very little about Australia, couldn't care less what they are doing tbh.  The link was from a very quick google search from which I gleaned that Australia (and New Zealand) have been doing harsh lockdowns and looks like they will continue to do so should the need arise - which it will for the reasons @Norman pointed out.

So, 'very quick' google searches are a substitute for proper research on topics you're unsure of now? 

Where I am there has not been a lockdown since April. No cases of community transmission in around 70 days, with a brief interlude of a small cluster that was effectively dealt with, and no cases of community transmission for the preceding 100 days. 

20 minutes ago, maxjam said:

Amongst other challenges, the UK is a global hub however and that does play a role in letting covid back into the country.  We will never reach 'gold standard' until it has passed through a large percentage of the population and keeping a lid on flair-ups will only add to the economic and social pain in the meantime.

You keep repeating this 'global hub' line ad nauseum, but as noted, other global hubs have not had that issue. 

Really, you're just raising the white flag. 

20 minutes ago, maxjam said:

I'm not going to spend the rest of the morning going over old ground though as the conversation never moves any further forwards.

Because you're wedded to a point that has already been shown to be false. You keep going back to this 'it's because we're a global hub', but as noted, air travel has fallen off a cliff, and other 'global hubs' aren't having those issues. 

15 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

Yes, comparing the current state with March (mid-March to be more exact). A true comparison would be showing the last 6 weeks with the 6 weeks leading up to mid-March (not the 6 weeks after)

The other point to keep in mind is that this is progressing slower than the first wave, as would be expected. This can already be readily seen in the data, and is expected. 

[ariotofmyown]

34 minutes ago, TexasRam said:

Why’s it a pathetic chart, doesn’t fit your narrative? Would it look terrifying? Show us then

My point is that you can set the 6 weeks comparison against any point to fix your own narrative. Claiming that your version of the graph is some sort of absolute truth is laughable. 

[maxjam]

1 minute ago, Albert said:

So, 'very quick' google searches are a substitute for proper research on topics you're unsure of now?

Nope, as stated I don't really care about Australia or what they are up to, I care about the UK and what is happening here.  If you didn't keep bringing Australia into the conversation no one would be talking about it.

 

4 minutes ago, Albert said:

You keep repeating this 'global hub' line ad nauseum, but as noted, other global hubs have not had that issue.

Yup, cos its an important factor.  Certainly more so for the UK than Australia. 

 

Now, to stop going on ad nauseum this will be my final reply.  You were triggered the other day by my comment about you always having the final word, but continue to provoke said ad nauseum whilst not moving the conversation on any further forwards.  This discussion is becoming a war of attrition and as has been pointed out by others, increasingly boring.

[Albert]

29 minutes ago, maxjam said:

Nope, as stated I don't really care about Australia or what they are up to, I care about the UK and what is happening here.  If you didn't keep bringing Australia into the conversation no one would be talking about it.

In other words, you're trying to deny the reality of the situation, because it makes you uncomfortable. 

29 minutes ago, maxjam said:

Yup, cos its an important factor.  Certainly more so for the UK than Australia. 

Hence we've discussed a myriad of other countries that have achieved the same or better than Australia, while being global hubs as well. 

29 minutes ago, maxjam said:

Now, to stop going on ad nauseum this will be my final reply.  You were triggered the other day by my comment about you always having the final word, but continue to provoke said ad nauseum whilst not moving the conversation on any further forwards.  This discussion is becoming a war of attrition and as has been pointed out by others, increasingly boring.

Not sure how I was 'triggered', but it seems you need to consider it that way for whatever reason. 

It's not attrition, it's really just you repeating the same, tired defeated points again and again, hoping that this time they gain traction, while desperately trying to distract from the discussion. If this were not true, you'd have dropped the 'global hub' line the first time that it was shown that other examples of 'global hubs' had indeed managed to control the virus as well. 

The fact that the line for you have remained that 'well, the UK just isn't capable of that' truly does speak volumes about how strong the case for controlling the disease actually is. Given you've already said you've had your final word though, I guess this is where our discussion ends, unless you were lying of course. 

[Gone]

3 hours ago, TexasRam said:

let’s not let the truth get in the way of a good bit of scaremongering.

10 pm ITV news stated that Blackpool Victoria Hospital is now full of COVID patients.

Truth-  The “allocated” beds for Covid patients are full. Which is 8.
From a total bed capacity of 767

 

Funny this didn’t get much response compared to the chart that was posted. Wonder why? 

[GboroRam]

I don't get this "I don't care about what Australia did" argument. Surely you look for good practice and see how you can replicate it as best you can in your own scenario? If Australia has got back to normality (almost) I'd be focusing on what they did and doing my damnedest to repeat it.

Also I don't get what a "global hub" is. What does that mean? Does it mean we have a lot of people coming and going? I'm sure that's common to a lot of countries with big cities.

I think we've failed to give a clear concise message during our long lockdown, and allowed too much freedom for people while at the same time trying to stop them from doing things in public. When other countries were putting patrols on the street to prevent people from roaming around, we were allowing exercise walks and trips to crowded beaches and beauty spots. If we'd just made lockdown more stringent, more hard - maybe we would have reduced the virus down to a manageable level. If we hadn't spaffed money on a failed test and trace system, leaving us playing catch-up to get a working solution in, maybe we could have managed the second wave better as we'd have less to catch and be better prepared to catch them as they popped up. If we had got testing up to the levels it should have been, maybe we would have had capacity to handle demand, rather than failing to test adequately - resulting in infected people still being in the population. 

Long story short, I'm worried what the second wave will look like. It's clearly still growing, tracking the death counts - and the health professionals are expecting it to grow for some time. 

Now we seem to be in a halfway house of part lockdowns for some people and full lockdowns for others, in an attempt to allow as much economic activity as possible yet stopping the virus where it's bad. It just seems destined to fail doing it piecemeal. While factories and offices and schools and universities are still operating full of people, we'll not be able to bring down the numbers. And until we have better testing, I'm not sure what we can do. Testing seems to be the key to getting things under control. If one Chinese city can plan to test 9m people, why are we still testing such comparatively low numbers of people?

[Grumpy Git]

[ariotofmyown]

3 minutes ago, TexasRam said:

Funny this didn’t get much response compared to the chart that was posted. Wonder why? 

Because this was small example of some potentially inaccurate reporting/statistics in one hospital, whereas with your hopeless chart, you were trying to claim that this showed some overall truth that there is nothing to worry about.

I remember around a month ago you were constantly going on about "why are hospital numbers not going up" when people were concerned about the rise in infections. You didn't seem to realise that infections are a leading indicator for hospital admissions.

Now hospital numbers are going up, you keep asking "why are the deaths not going up", failing to realise that hospital admissions are a leading indicators for deaths.

And this is all happening against a backdrop of restrictions that you don't agree with.

I hope you don't end up been the @smiths_tavrn of the 2nd wave.

[Andicis]

1 minute ago, ariotofmyown said:

Now hospital numbers are going up, you keep asking "why are the deaths not going up", failing to realise that hospital admissions are a leading indicators for deaths.

I don't disagree, but there are clearly more ways to treat coronavirus now than before. So I'd imagine and hope hospitals can prevent a lot more deaths than they good the first time around. 

[ariotofmyown]

Just now, Andicis said:

I don't disagree, but there are clearly more ways to treat coronavirus now than before. So I'd imagine and hope hospitals can prevent a lot more deaths than they good the first time around. 

Let's hope so. But we can only do that effectively if the hospitals don't end up full.